A Single Pure White Rose
by Meep meep
Summary: When Draco returns to England for his mother's funeral, he takes a trip to a certain grave. Will he ever get over the death of the sole person who didn't see him as just another Malfoy?
1. A Single Pure White Rose

Disclaimer: not mine.

Draco placed the letter down with the flowers on the earth before him. The soil made him want to burst into tears, but he couldn't. Not with his son beside him and his wife drawing closer. But he placed the letter there, even while he knew that that letter would never cross the intended reader's eyes. Never make the reader laugh, or cry. But Draco could never fully accept the fact that the intended reader was gone. He couldn't. Or he just didn't want to try.

He still wanted to believe that letter would be read. Wanted to believe… something. Anything. He just wanted to feel like he did then. Whole. Protected.

Loved.

The word sounded foreign now. It was hard to believe such a thing existed. Not when the only person to penetrate his cold heart was in front of his feet. Not now that the last remnants of their existence was a few scrolled words on a cold slab.

No. Love was a fairy tale. He had never been loved, never would be. Only his daughter would love him, and Simi would do that blindly, simply because he had helped bring her into this world.

And in one moment of weakness he had broken the armour he had built around himself, the barriers he had made were crumbled. And Draco's heart once again could feel the pain that he had tried so hard to get rid of.

The pain of the death of the only person in the world who had ever treated him like a human. Treated him as something more than the heir. Than a Malfoy. And it tore him to pieces. He turned his back on the grave, and some hidden part of him died. What he had pretended for years now had taken hold of him. He was numb. Unfeeling, uncaring. Numb.

And finally, the last remains were scattered to leave only the words scrawled on stone, a letter, and a single pure white rose.

He took his daughter by the hand and led her away. He walked to his wife, and looked back to the grave. His soul died inside him and killed any part of him that was able to feel. He was no longer humane. No longer human.

He was finally guilty of all the accusations.

He was a monster.

PqpqpqpqpQ

He watched as Draco turned his back, and waited till he and the little girl had joined with another woman and left. He crouched as Draco suddenly turned to lay one last look at the grave. Draco turned and walked out of the gates with his family.

Stealing out of the bushes he made his way to the grave.

On it was placed a pure white rose and a letter.

He picked up the letter and read it.

_Hello again._

_I haven't visited at all, because I couldn't accept the truth. I still can't, but I was here for my mother's funeral so I came. I don't know why I wrote this, it was a moment of weakness and I felt so lost that I couldn't have talked to anyone but you. It's going to kill me to come to your grave to deliver this, but I couldn't give a damn anymore. My daughter is condemned to die as a sacrifice, just as my other three daughters have been. And my wife will soon run out of little girls to give. But she won't kill Evan. She'll keep him and turn him into a Death Eater. They've reformed, you know. Voldemort is gone so they've taken Dumbledore as their leader and are set to kill again. Tomorrow I am going to fulfil my own prophecy. I will kill the new Dark Lord, and have my wife and her comrades executed in the bloody battle that will follow. So I'll be left with a 1-year-old baby boy and a four-year-old girl to raise. Guess I've really bypassed all the rumours, huh?_

_I just wrote this cause you're the only person who would ever listen to me. I won't let your death have been in vain, my friend._

_You'll always be my best friend. Even though you're gone. I'm writing this and it feels like the old days, before the war. It almost feels like I'm writing to you from the common room. Which, by the way, I am now Head of House for. I'm also the Potions professor. _

_Hope your happy, mate._

_Draco._

The writing changed abruptly to a child's untidy scrawl.

**My daddy told me you were his friend. I want you to know that daddy is upset with you. And since the Simi lives her daddy I want you to say sorry, cos when my daddy is upset I'm upset. And I don't like to be upset.**

**Bye-bye**

**Simi.**

He laughed darkly. The person in question would never say 'sorry' to Draco.

Looking at the grave, Harry shuddered.

Harry Potter – The Boy Who Lived


	2. Angels and Demons

_Dedication: to fizzycolasugarhigh for being so fabulous and reassuring me that this was good stuff. Thank you Daisy!_

Harry ran as fast and as far as he could before he collapsed at the foot of the marbled angel. Sad to say that she was his only contact to human-like behaviour. He was human here, in this place, at the foot of the angel. Anywhere else and he was a beast, an animal.

He had stayed by that grave – _his_ grave – for many years. The cemetery was his home now, he wasn't welcome anywhere else. But he was used to being the outcast. He had dealt with the pain of hiding and leaving everyone behind to cope and grieve. But in some ways it was appropriate that they grieve. The boy they knew was dead, long dead, but for the minute it took to read the letter. That had brought it all back, the pain, the grief and those horrible memories.

Dumbledore as the Dark Lord? The man who had thrown every wave of attack, been on the front line, did everything to stop Voldemort. All that effort, and it was just to make him_self_ the Evil Overlord, the Ultimate Bad Ass?

And Draco, poor, darling Draco, child of the night and doomed to be unhappy for the rest of his life. First he was cursed with the parents he had, tyrants of Voldemort's army, and now with a Death Eater for a wife because he was fulfilling a prophecy. Doomed to unhappiness because the fates deemed it so. Harry knew how that was, knew the pain that came with the responsibility of having the entire world to save.

'_My daughter is condemned to die as a sacrifice, just as my other three daughters have been. And my wife will soon run out of little girls to give. But she won't kill Evan. She'll keep him and turn him into a Death Eater._'

'That has to suck' Harry said thoughtfully. The angel didn't disagree. Harry tried to distract himself from the harsh reality of the world – he had left Draco alone to deal with this life, to deal with children he never would have had were Harry still there. To deal with a wife he never would have married were Harry still around.

The angel looked down on him disapprovingly.

'What do you know about it anyway?' Harry said lashing out vindictively at the marble figure. She looked at him patronisingly, in a manner that said, without a doubt, _what do you know, little boy? You know nothing of this world you pathetic little man._

Harry glared at her. He knew what he had done was wrong, and right now he was doing his best to think of a way to fix it. He looked questioningly at the imperious woman beside him. Another look – _well what do you expect _me _to do about it?_

The angel reminded him a little too much of Hermione. He could fix this. He would fix this. 'Come on Potter, you have a big enough brain, _use it!_' He knew he'd have to get out there again, to try and save the world again, but he couldn't leave Draco to sort out a mess he had helped to make.

'I'm going to have to go back out there aren't I?' he asked. The angel took on a very Seamus-like expression, clearly saying _well, Duh._

Harry hated it when the angel won arguments. It led to all sorts of questions on his part on whether or not he was sane enough to leave. But leave he must.

The big, black iron gates beckoned leeringly, signalling the entrance into the 'real world'.

No matter how hard it was, no matter if this time really was the last time, and no matter if what he had just didn't seem good enough, he would do this. If only to save the only person who didn't see him as those three horrendous words that made up his eulogy.

This time, when he helped to save the world, it would be as Harry. The man, the fully-grown, the prophesised, the waited-for, even the Saviour, these names wouldn't matter. He would be just Harry, and he would save the only friend he had left without ever needing to be The Boy-Who-Lived. This time he would save them on his own terms and fate be damned.

The angel Hermione watched on as Harry set the wheels of fate in motion, and smiled proudly in a very Hermione-like smile as she watched him run from the cemetery and out into the world. Her boy would save the world.

She gave him one last look, the look that James would have given Harry were he here today – _that's my boy._


	3. Forgive and Forget

Harry wandered out of the cemetery and along the only route he knew of. He'd been so careful – not using magic in case it was sensed, not to go anywhere but along this route, to the one shop he would never be recognized as anything other than the homeless guy from the cemetery.

Normally he went there only for food, and sometimes another blanket or jumper. But it wasn't the food that drew him there, but the people. He'd missed human contact, not that he got much looking and, yes, smelling the way that he did. But at least they were there; he could talk to them and act normally around them.

Reaching the shop, he paused, suddenly fearful of the road that he was laying himself on. He could see it, stretching outwards, in his mind. It led him on an unpleasant route of hate and loathing. He turned, ready to run back to the cemetery, but paused when his fingers brushed against the petals on a rosebush on the road side. They were red here, red like blood, like hate and anger, fear and war and _so much death_. But the touch was the same as the other, bringing a sharp picture to the forefront of his mind, pure white, but it was still the colour of grief and loss, pain and hopelessness. But more than that it was the colour of responsibility. _'Condemned to die as a sacrifice',_ that was what he'd written. And it was all Harry's fault. All this pain and loss, all the grief and the hopelessness, he'd caused it. And he'd be damned if he didn't at least _try_ to fix it, didn't even bother to go to Draco and apologise.

So Harry turned back and faced the shop, with its little bus stop that had the only bus that headed to town, and he stood there. Waiting and thinking, thinking of the man he'd left to this life. God, he suddenly knew what it was he'd been missing all these months. It wasn't human contact, not that at all, it was Draco. And everything he was feeling inside, that was his own kind of grief, his sense of loss at never seeing Draco again.

And the guilt at leaving Draco behind to a war-torn world, still heaving with revolution, still burning in the aftermath of such a terrible time.

Faking his death was quite possibly the worst thing Harry had ever done, because look what had happened to his world while he'd been gone. A leader of his people had turned his back on them and left them to rot while he sought world domination, and Draco had lost the only things he had going right in his life.

Harry wanted to change that, and with a sense of fate slipping into place, he knew, climbing the steps onto the bus that had pulled up, that he would. He would change it, or he would die.

And this time, it would be very real.

But then as the bus began to drive away, Harry's doubts returned. It was almost the same as the last time, but this time it was bigger. Looming on his mind, the 'what if's and the flashes of memory of the battlefields, ground littered with bodies. That village, the one that was covered up, where the ground was littered with the bodies of children, so many children and… Stop. Harry decided not to think on that. This time there would be no war, no bodies save one. Alright, two. One for Dumbledore, and the other, the other for Draco's wife.

Because Harry was back, and that meant she'd better look out. No one hurt his Draco, and no one raised a finger against a child. He'd made that a rule after the village.

And Dumbledore and Draco's wife, they'd done both.

Harry had never been one to forgive and forget.


	4. Hold My Hand

Draco walked down the path he always took to get away. He'd walked this path three times before, and had prayed he'd never walk it again. But now the loss was back, the helplessness and the fear of the future. And so he walked along it, the path of his nightmares. The road was overgrown with brambles, thick and twisted. The edges were covered by black and red roses, the colour of death and blood. The only colours in his life now.

Draco had never understood why he had to play fortune's fool every time, but he supposed this was how Harry used to feel, before the deaths that day… to win the only thing you'd ever lived for, only to die before you got to live a life of your own… fate's most cruel game. To take and break a person only to give them a hope so you have something to take away.

The lights were fading here, and reminded him of what he had to do the next day. Despite everything, he had loved his wife. Once upon a time, before… before Dumbledore. Before the kids started dying, before the parties ended with a death.

He'd never had the stomach for the deaths of children. He'd been about to quit the Academy when they gave him his certificate and packed him up for war. And only one other person had finished that early – Harry Potter. Then, as now, Draco had felt like he was just a pawn in someone else's game. A really _unlucky_ pawn. But over the weeks spent in such close quarters – sharing a tent, sharing the jobs, sharing the responsibility – they felt closer than they'd ever felt with anyone else. They'd both opened up about their lives, talked about their pasts and their hopeful futures.

And when Draco had been injured, Harry had stayed by his side every minute. No one was allowed on that field without a partner, so Harry didn't have to leave. Draco could remember the soft hands moving his hair from his face, holding his hand and the voice that talked to him every time it could.

And Draco repaid the favour that night… that awful night of blood and fear and death… and he'd held Harry's hand and talked to him and hid his tears while Harry died in his arms.

The grave by the cemetery was an empty grave – everyone who died that day was buried in the fields, a hidden reminder of what had happened.

But Draco didn't really need a reminder. He remembered everything, it played on his mind like a waking nightmare… and when he slept every sense was heightened, the smell of blood and battle, the feel of the damp and cold. The feel of his heart breaking in his chest.

And when he wakes the world is black with sin and pain and strife. The world turns in its own pit, the only light coming from the depths of Hell. Their self-induced Hell caused by wars and poverty.

And it was in this Hell that he lived, with his wife and children. To bring them into this, to have them brought up in a world that he'd fought so hard to save… just to have his efforts come back and kill the only others he could have loved since the Incident.

And as Draco touched the blackened roses it reminded him of everything he'd lost. Soft like a child's hand, soft like a whisper, soft like love. Soft like his tears while he held a roughened hand in his own, held on tight while two people died.

And only one was Harry.


	5. Five shots

He signed the note and packed his things. A note for baby and another for Mummy. One saying one thing, the other something completely different. But it wasn't like it mattered so much anymore, the only thing that mattered was that he got away before she saw, got clean away with his little girl. He wished he could take them both away, but she'd never stop looking then, never stop trying to claw him out of hiding, to rip his baby boy from his arms.

The only thing that mattered was that Simi got out, safe and alive enough to grow up good. Because that was what you did when you loved someone – you sacrificed yourself just to give them a chance.

"_No, no! You have to look at me, Harry look at me! Don't you dare die, you hear me? Don't you DARE!"_

Like a game of roulette. Five shots you win, one shot you die. And that's all it ever was – one shot to break a man, one shot to take everything away, and leave someone crying in the dust.

"_I need to tell you something…you have to listen, you hear? If you go out there, we both die. Because the only way you're going down is if I go first. No, listen. I know it's stupid…I know I'm not well enough to go…but you go out there and I swear to God I will pin myself to your uniform so that every shot hits me first"_

Five shots of broken promises…promises that stole his dreams, promises that should have been kept. Promises that would have kept them both safe. Five shots…five shots to break a man, but only one to kill.

"_D, watch it! You slowing down? Speed it up…these people don't have time to waste while you saunter over…what the? Is that blood? Oh my G- medic!!! D hold still, you'll drown yourself if you don't hold still"_

"_Don't leave me, please god, Harry, don't leave me"_

"_I'm not going anywhere…I'm right here, D. I got you. I'll stay as long as you need me…"_

Like a competition, winner lives… a memory, a summer day, wrapped up in a medics tent, shivering but not from cold. From the heat of breath on his shoulder, a hand on his hip, a whisper in his ear.

"_I'll always be here for you, D…I'm not leaving…not ever"_

Cold nights in a woman's bed to try and ease the hurt, but all it ever did was bring more. Choosing the exact opposite of what he wanted just to stave off the memories, but even that never worked – never allowed the bliss of forgetting…the look on that face, the feel of the wind ripping into him…trying to protect someone but it just doesn't work.

_A gentle kiss – the first, a sweet sigh._

"_I thought you were dead, D…I can't live without you, you know? Don't leave me"_

"_I wont, not ever. You get that? I'll never leave you, Harry"_

And no one questions the reality of it…an open sore in the world caused by anger and hate. And no one stops or makes a stand. Not anymore. Not since Harry died.

_Going out, over the top, into the field, drop, fire, start again. Couldn't see, no matter, don't need to…enemy's straight ahead. Darkness, fog and blood, scent of death, clouds everything. Focus, focus on the task because here aint no second chances, this is war._

_Enemy fire, drop, return, don't break the line, don't run, don't scream. No sound but the bullets, and the groans of the dying. Two down, two down, make that four…keep up, don't fall behind…one shot…another man down, my man…my man down._

One shot to kill a man…five shots to break him.


	6. Running for Home

Harry ran. Not that crazy, half-assed running you sometimes saw, but full out, no-longer-breathing, they're-at-the-gate, they're-shooting-at-our-heels running. The real kind of running that Harry had seen far too often in the war. Especially that day…that one fateful day.

'_Harry! Harry! We need to get out!'_

'_D slow it down! Why? Why do we need to run?'_

'_Does it matter? Go, Harry! NOW!'_

An army on the doorsteps felt nothing like watching him cry at your tombstone. Harry knew this, knew he shouldn't have left, knew he needed to fix it, but all he could see in front of his eyes was a distant past.

'_You said you wouldn't leave me, D, you promised!'_

'_I'm not leaving, Harry. You are.'_

A thousand times seeing him throw his life away to save someone else's made it all the more difficult for Harry to picture someone who could just steal the things someone love.

He couldn't picture the pain he'd went through seeing his children sacrificed like that. But then…Harry had been at the village. Harry knew what he went through back then, and he knew that this had to be a thousand times worse than back then.

'_D, you HAVE to LEAVE'_

'_I'm not going. No, Harry, shut up and listen to me! The back way will take you and the scouts out beyond the back line, so you'll need to go round till you reach the front -'_

'_I'm not going without you!'_

'_Yes you bloody are! Get out of here Harry, these people need me here'_

'_I need you! D, I need you safe'_

'_We're in a war, Harry. I'm not safe. And you know you have me, but only after these people are safe. I can't leave the children behind Harry, I just can't. Now go, already!'_

Those children hadn't survived. Not one of them. They'd been slaughtered on Draco's watch, every one of them.

And so they'd hunted and they'd killed the people who had done it. And then Harry had held Draco in his arms whilst he cried…and now he was losing the same damn battle. The enemy was slaughtering children and Draco was helpless. Only this time, he didn't know that Harry was on his way. Running, running…up the paths to the old mansion, up and up and u and then…he saw it. That old path Draco had been too afraid to walk down. The path Harry knew he'd gone down when Blaise died in front of his eyes, and Harry thought he'd gone down after the war. Overgrown and dark. Twisting thorns, and bloody roses. Dark and deep and full of loss and bitterness. And Harry just knew that if he went down there he'd find…something. Something important.

He walked down the twisted path, the cobbles echoing under his feet, blindly following some instinct that he thought he'd felt before, back when he'd first walked this path, back when the enemy were at the gate, back when he was running blind and _soaring, full speed, no sense of direction just the need to know, the need to see that he'd survived, running running running, no future no past no nothing just here, the centre of the maze, the fire, the fire inside that consumed his when he saw the broken bodies at the centre, not his baby please god not his baby _and he saw it. The ghostly image of the bodies pasted over what was really there, just a small thing. A white rose at the centre, just one _for you, Harry_ and a doll. A little girl, blonde and blue eyed. And a small piece of fabric, caught on the thorns, trapped in the maze of horrors and nightmares.

And Harry knew, he just knew _broken dolls, black haired, bloody, lying in the centre, and the second blonde and blue eyed, rocking, crying like the world was ending, clutching the hand like a life line, begging him to come back, come home, not to leave him_ they were gone.


End file.
